Sera's POV
The soldier's hand closed on her wrist before she could run.
His grip was like iron and cold despite the night air. She tried to pull away but her body had nothing left. No strength. No fight. Just the hollow feeling of someone already dead inside. He dragged her forward and she didn't resist because what was the point of resisting now.
Then something moved in the darkness behind him.
A shape came out of nowhere and slammed into the soldier so hard he flew backward. His hand released her wrist and she stumbled forward, her legs barely holding her weight. It took her a moment to understand what she was seeing. Mira. Her best friend since childhood. Mira was on top of the soldier with a rock in her hands and she was hitting him over and over with a kind of rage that made the night seem darker.
"Run," Mira gasped between blows. "Run now."
Sera didn't ask questions. She ran.
She crashed back into the forest without knowing where she was going, just knowing she had to move. Behind her she heard the soldier shout and Mira scream but she couldn't stop. If she stopped they would both die. Her feet found a path that seemed to lead deeper into the darkness and she followed it until her lungs felt like they were shredding inside her chest.
She didn't stop until the forest opened up to a ravine. One wrong step and she would fall. She pressed her back against a tree and tried to breathe. The night stretched on forever. She waited for sounds of pursuit but they never came.
When dawn finally broke, she forced herself to move.
The walk back to Ashenmoor took hours. Her feet moved like they belonged to someone else. The village looked different in daylight. Smaller somehow. The flames were completely gone now, leaving behind a wasteland of black and gray and the smell that would never leave her.
Bodies lay where they'd fallen. Some she recognized. Most she didn't want to recognize. The healing house was just a skeleton of burned wood. The marketplace was rubble. Nothing remained of the life that had existed here yesterday.
She moved through the wreckage like a ghost moving through a dream. Her mind wouldn't accept what her eyes were showing her. This wasn't real. This was a nightmare and she would wake up soon in her small room above the healing house and Elder Thorne would be downstairs grinding herbs and everything would be normal.
It wasn't a nightmare.
She found her mother near the edge of the village. The soldiers had left her there in the dirt like she was nothing. Sera recognized her by the blue dress she'd worn yesterday. The dress her father had brought her back from the market two summers ago. Her mother's face was turned away and Sera was grateful for that because she didn't know if her mind could handle seeing it.
She found her father inside what used to be the grain stores. He was still reaching upward like he'd been trying to grab something as the fire consumed him. She didn't look at him for very long.
Her brother took longer to find. The youngest of three children. Only fourteen years old and already taller than their father. She found him at the edge of the village with three other teenagers, all of them together like they'd tried to make a stand. It didn't matter. They were just kids. The soldiers didn't care about that.
Sera started digging.
The frozen ground was hard and her hands weren't made for this kind of work. They were healer's hands. Gentle hands. Hands that were supposed to help people not bury them. But there was no one else. She dug with a stick and then with a rock and then with her bare hands when the tool broke. The cold made her fingers go numb but she kept digging.
By afternoon she had three holes that were deep enough. They weren't perfect graves. They were rough and sad and too small for the weight of what they meant. But they would have to be enough.
She carried her mother first. The body was stiff and cold and weighed more than Sera expected. She lowered her into the ground as gently as she could and whispered words that didn't mean anything. She didn't know what you were supposed to say at a burial. No one had ever taught her that.
Her father came next. Then her brother.
She stood above the three graves with her hands hanging at her sides and waited to feel something. Grief. Rage. Pain. Anything. But there was only emptiness. A void so complete that it felt like she'd been hollowed out and there was nothing left inside her body but air.
Someone found her there as the sun was setting.
A voice called her name and she turned to see Mira running toward her with tears streaming down her face. Mira's shirt was torn and her arm was bleeding from a deep gash but she was alive. The sight of her friend alive cracked something in Sera's chest.
"Sera," Mira breathed when she reached her. "I've been looking everywhere. When you didn't come back I thought he caught you. I thought you were dead too."
Sera wanted to tell her that dead might have been easier but the words wouldn't come out.
Mira looked at the graves and understanding moved across her face like a shadow. She reached for Sera but Sera pulled away. She couldn't be touched right now. If she felt another person's warmth she might break completely and there wasn't time for breaking.
"There are others," Mira said quietly. "Survivors. Maybe ten or fifteen. They're hiding in the old mines near the northern ridge. I was heading there when I saw your fires."
Sera looked around the destroyed village. The ruins of her entire life. The bones of people she'd known her whole existence.
"We should go," Mira said, grabbing her hand. "The soldiers are still out there. They're hunting the survivors. We need to move now before they circle back."
Sera didn't move. She stayed staring at the three graves while Mira pulled on her arm and begged her to come. The sun was touching the horizon, painting the sky in shades of red and orange like blood smeared across heaven.
"I can't leave them," Sera said.
Her voice sounded strange. Not like her own voice. Like something dead speaking through her body.
Mira's grip tightened on her arm. "We have to. Sera please. I know this hurts. I know you're broken but we need you alive. The others need you alive."
Sera didn't want to be alive. Being alive meant feeling this. Being alive meant remembering that this morning her family had existed and now they didn't. Being alive was a curse that she couldn't escape from.
But she looked at Mira's desperate face and saw in it the same thing she'd seen in her mother's face yesterday in the healing house doorway. Fear mixed with the stubborn refusal to give up. So she let Mira pull her away from the graves. She let her friend drag her back toward the forest as darkness fell completely.
They'd made it maybe fifty yards into the trees when they heard the voices.
Men's voices. Many of them. Coming from the direction they'd just come from. Mira pulled Sera down behind a fallen log and they crouched in the dark, barely breathing. Through the gaps in the wood, Sera could see the glow of torches approaching the village ruins.
A figure on horseback rode through the devastation. Even in the flickering torchlight she could see that this man was different from the regular soldiers. He wore armor that looked expensive and moved like someone used to being obeyed. His scarred face was visible as he turned and called out orders.
"Find any survivors," he commanded. His voice was calm and cold and absolutely certain that he would be followed. "I want them alive. The girl especially. If you see a girl with dark hair and green eyes, bring her to me directly. There's a reward for that one."
Sera's blood turned to ice.
He was looking for her. Specifically for her. And as if the gods themselves were mocking her grief, the man turned his horse slightly and his scarred face tilted upward. His eyes swept across the forest where she and Mira were hiding.
She saw the moment his gaze locked onto their position.
"There," he shouted, pointing directly at them. "In the trees."